About

Hourglass Literary Magazine is an annual and bilingual magazine which is being published in print and digital form in English as well as the languages of the region (BCMS).

The magazine’s annual contest calls for participation by authors writing in English and in the BCMS languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro. The contest is international in format, and there are no geographical restrictions so long as the submissions are in one of the languages specified.

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Goal

We want to achieve intercultural mélange, first and foremost literary, that is: we will pose a series of questions on the pages of Hourglass Literary Magazine, such as: what are poetics and formal solutions and (pre)dominant themes of authors who write in English, that is languages of the region (BCMS)?! What remained of post-modernism, textual acrobatics and semantic gymnastics (John Barth, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenick etc.)? “Return to tradition”? How “Beat” generation echoes in works of contemporary writers? From Borges, through the novel and the emergence of the novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote to Danilo Kis – interpolation? Where do we write from? What do we write about when we write about love?

Giving names to any of our activities holds little appeal to us; however, some common denominators seem to be necessary:

All differences, primarily: religious, cultural, linguistic, etc., and this word differences should not be taken lightly, for us they’re no obstacles; what more! For us, as we have said, these differences are actually one of the reasons why Hourglass Literary Magazine even exists. Variety is the soul of our magazine, and in a broader sense, of all art. We seek to encourage understanding and tolerance through art.

Hourglass Literary Magazine is an independent literary space and as such has zero tolerance for hatred, notably: any kind of national, religious, racial or gender hatred; at the same time we do not tolerate:

a) Anti-Semitism;

b) Denial of the Holocaust;

c) Neo-Stalinism;

d) Anti-feminism;

e) Anti-LGBT movements;

f) The list of so-called “hatred” (or “hated!”) groups, organizations and “activists/activities” – unfortunately the list is infinite and cannot be completed here.

TOWARD POLYPHONY OF [OUR] VOICES!

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Voki Erceg, Editor-in-Chief. Born in Banja Luka in 1986. He graduated at the Academy of Arts (Film and TV directing) on featured film, documentary drama God’s People (Božji Ljudi); directed a number of short films, of which the most notable is experimental-documentary Story (in three images). He has published a collection of stories Senka (2011); collaborates with the literary magazines in the region; and translates poetry from English.

Lejla Kalamujić, Senior Editor. Born in Sarajevo 16.08.1980, where she still lives, graduated at the Department of Philosophy and Sociology. She’s the author of the collection of stories “The Anatomy of a smile” (Zoro, Sarajevo / Zagreb 2010), writes prose, essays and reviews in magazines and on web portals in BiH and the region.

Lana Bastašić, Senior Editor. Born in Zagreb, SFR Yugoslavia, in 1986. She has published two collections of short stories and one of poetry. She won the Best Short Story Award at the ‘Zija Dizdarević’ competition in Fojnica (2010 and 2011), the Special Jury Award at the ‘Where I’m Calling From’ festival in Podgorica (2010), the Best Short Story Award at the ‘Ulaznica’ festival in Zrenjanin (2010), Best Play by a Bosnian Playwright Award at the competition organized by Kamerni tea tar 55 in Sarajevo (2013) and Targa UNESCO Prize for poetry at the Castello di Duino festival in Trieste (2013). She collaborates with the literary magazines ‘Polja’ (Novi Sad) and ‘Putevi’ (Banja Luka). She lives andworks in Barcelona.

Anirban Ray Choudhury, Guest Editor. Born and educated in India, Anirban now resides and works in Hong Kong. Currently the honorary editor of Fabula Press, he was the editor of the webzine Quill & Ink for over a decade. He had also been a columnist for Buzzle, writing on a variety of subjects ranging from literature to science. A published poet, Anirban is actively engaged in several literary projects, and had helped set up Pen Himalaya, one of the first webzines for poets and writers from Nepal.

Tea Tulić, Board Member. Born in Rijeka in 1978, she published prose in various national and international literary magazines, including McSweeney’s in San Francisco. Her short stories have been translated into English, French, Slovenian and Polish language. In 2011 she published fragmentary novel “Kosa posvuda”(Hair Everywhere) for which she won a Prozak award and Croatian Ministry of Culture award as one of the finest Romanesque creations in 2011 based on the criteria of high literary and artistic value. She is also a member of the jury of international literary competition for short stories Lapis Histriae and an informal literary group RiLit Rijeka and one of the authors of their joint collection of short stories. In 2011 in cooperation with Enver Krivac and music collective Japanese Prime Ministers she published spoken word album “Albumče”.

Tanja Stupar-Trifunović, Board and Jury Member. Born in Zadar in 1977, graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Department of Serbian Language and Literature in Banja Luka, she writes poetry, columns and literary criticism. Her poetry was awarded and translated into English, French, German, Polish, Slovenian and Danish; also present in several selections of poetry and prose at home and abroad. She is the editor of the literature, arts and culture magazine “Putevi” (Roads), and lives in Banja Luka.

SibelanForrester, Board and Jury Member. Poet. Professor of Russian, in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. A specialist in Russian poetry and Russian women writers, she published “Translation as Reincarnation, Preserving Difference in Textual Bodies,” (Translation Review, 1998) as a prelude to her Interpretation Theory-listed translation workshop where students explored the concept of translation in theory and practice, as hermeneutics writ large. Her earlier published work includes the co-edited volume with Pamela Chester, Engendering Slavic Literatures (Indiana UP, 1996) and a co-edited volume with Magdalena Zaborowska and Elena Gapova, Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures through an East-West Gaze (Indiana UP, 2004). Prof. Forrester is the translator of Elena Ignatova, The Diving Bell (Zephyr Press, 2006), a bilingual collection of poems.

Jelena Lengold, Board and Jury Member. Born in 1959 in Krusevac. She has published twelve books, six collections of poetry, five books of stories and a novel, her work is present in many anthologies of poetry and short stories, and her books have been translated and published in several languages. For the book of poems “Pictures from Life of Kapellmeister” she received the Đura Jaksic award. For the collection of stories “Fairground Magician” she won the Biljana Jovanović award, Female Pen award, “Zlatni hit liber” and EU award for literature. For a book of poems, “The Well of Heavy Words” she received “Jefimijin vez” award. She lives in Belgrade.

John K. Cox, Board and Jury Member. John K. Cox is a professor of history, specializing in East European intellectual history, at North Dakota State University (Fargo). He has also been the head of the Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies there since 2007. Before that he taught for thirteen years at Wheeling Jesuit University. Cox earned his PhD from Indiana University in 1995, and his research and teaching focus primarily on nationalism, fascism, and communism in the Balkans and Central Europe. He has also taught widely on the Ottoman Empire, history through film, nationalism, and the Holocaust. His books include The History of Serbia (2002) and Slovenia: Evolving Loyalties (2005), and his articles include studies of the Independent State of Croatia and the historical importance of the Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis. Much of his work is situated at the intersection of literature and history, and he has translated novels by Kis, Ivan Cankar, and Vjenceslav Novak, and shorter works of fiction by Joseph Roth, Ismail Kadare, Ivo Andric, and Ivan Ivanji, and he is currently translating prose by Miklos Radnoti and Ajla Terzic. In Fall 2014 he was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Szeged (Hungary).